Bentley Dadmun - Harry Neal and Cat 09 - Dead Dead Dead, the Little Girl Said

by Bentley Dadmun

  Then, a short distance from the corner, recessed in the stones, we found another door. This one was iron, extremely corroded, and hanging from rust flaked hinges as thick as my anxiety. Priscilla grabbed the iron handle on the door, said, “Open Sesame,” and pulled. With a metallic scream the door reluctantly opened. I took an involuntary deep breath and shined my light into the space.

  A narrow, stone passage with a floor of twisted boards half buried in dirt went at a downward angle into darkness. Our lights bouncing erratically, we crept down the passage and came to another badly corroded iron door hanging from its top hinge. After a moment’s inspection, Priscilla turned sideways and slammed her foot into it. With a loud clang, it fell to the floor.

  We aimed our lights into an open chamber. It was like looking through murky water, but it was enough. Priscilla punched my arm and in a joyous, hissing whisper said, “Oh yes, yes indeedy!”

  Evenly spaced along the side and back walls of a small stone room, covered with years of accumulated dirt and enveloped in a thick web of cobwebs, were six coffins sitting on carpenters saw horses. A shiver swept through my body and I suddenly had trouble breathing. Hunched over, light held straight out, I shuffled to the first coffin and rubbed away layers of grime with the edge of my hand. The coffins were the classic pine boxes that greedy funeral home directors hide in the back room away from grieving widows while they talked up the high priced models lined with white satin and resting on silver stands.

  I handed Priscilla my flashlight, got my hands under the front of the coffin and lifted. Light, but not empty. I felt around for a latch or hinge and found nails. “Christ,” I whispered. “These things are nailed shut, the cheapest coffins made.”

  “What did you expect?” Priscilla said. “Polished oak inlaid with gold?” She pointed to a small toolbox, filthy and rusted, sitting on a ledge just inside the door. She fumbled it open and grabbed a thoroughly corroded claw hammer. “Okay. Now… now we find out.”

  The dried out pine squealed like a frightened piglet as she worked her way along the coffin, jamming the claw under the lid, pressing down, moving the hammer, jamming it back in the wood and pulling down again. She worked her way around the coffin, dropped the hammer, got her fingers under the lid and pried it off.

  The skeleton was small. When alive the person couldn’t have been much over five feet. It was hard to tell. It’s hard to be accurate about anything when opening coffins deep in a filthy crypt. “A woman,” I said.

  Priscilla’s voice was a sardonic razor. “No kidding, ya think?” The skeleton was dressed in what may have been a black dress. Shriveled up leather shoes huddled in a corner by her feet, and resting by the skull was a wispy bird’s nest of tarnished silver hair. Priscilla reached in and lightly slapped the skull. It thudded against the side of the coffin and little bones rattled against the cheap wood.

  About three inches back from the left eye socket was a small, perfectly round hole. I put a finger over it and whispered, “Twenty two caliber.” Then I touched my bandaged wound with the same finger.

  Priscilla started to say something but it came out in a gasp. She doubled over and began hacking and coughing. Hunched over, hugging herself, she made desperate noises and fought for air. I pulled her up, held her with one arm, and snapped her mask several times with my fingers, knocking off a thick layer of dust. She tried to straightened, bent over again, and coughed violently for a time. Finally she sucked in several deep, wheezing breaths and nodded. “Okay. It’s okay… I’m okay… really. Thanks.”

  I watched as she struggled for air. Her distress slowly subsided. I touched her shoulder and whispered, “We’re getting out of here, we can come back when… ”

  She shook her head violently and pushed me away. “Not a chance Harry, not a chance. I can deal with it.” I watched her. And after a time I smiled. With the mask on, caked with cobwebs, and covered with dirt, she looked like a demented rodent with a mangled flat top. She looked at me and said, “What?”

  Smiling, I shook my head and snapped my own mask several times, creating another small cloud. Suddenly I could breath much easier, I hadn’t realized how clogged the mask had become. A ripple of fear flitted across my mind, and the urge to flee this filthy hell swept over me like a wave. I took several deep breaths, lifted my arms above my head, pressed my palms against a bark encrusted beam and leaned forward, trying to stretch away the anxiety that was clamped to my chest. I relaxed a bit, and keeping my light on the ceiling, did a little calculating. After mentally double checking, I touched Priscilla’s shoulder and said, “Gretchen is serving supper about twenty feet above us.”

  Priscilla stared at the ceiling. She shook her head and whispered, “Jesus. I don’t believe it. I can’t. I mean, all the pedaling around, all the bullshit… and all the time we were sitting on it, drinking bad wine and talking just like we knew what we were about.”

  We turned back to the coffins. The second one held a jumbled pile of bones and two skulls, both with little round holes three inches beyond the left eye socket. No clothes but by the size of the bones they were probably women.

  The third coffin held a single skeleton dressed in a rotting blue uniform. I gingerly pulled at the blue cloth. “No wallet or name tag,” I whispered. “But I think it’s safe to assume this is Rundle.”

  “It ‘tis, it ‘tis,” Priscilla said. She picked up the skull and turned it. On its left side just above where the ear would have been, were two small holes. “Twenty twos again. Dorthea sure got a lot of use out of that piece.” She held out her other hand, palm up, and rocked Rundle’s skull. Bone fragments and two flattened bullets dropped in her hand. We stared at them for a time, then she put the fragments and bullets back in the skull, put the skull back in the coffin, and dropped the lid.

  The skeleton in the forth coffin wore shorts, a tee shirt that was probably once red, and dried out Nike running shoes. Priscilla picked up the skull. In the back, midway up, was a round, splintered hole considerably larger than the others. I held out my hand and Priscilla up ended the skull. Bone fragments and a bullet dropped into my hand. The bullet was flattened, lopsided, and a lot bigger than a twenty two. Priscilla put the skull back, patted its forehead and whispered, “Frank… long time.”

  I put my light on the muddle of bones. “No rings,” I said.

  The two other coffins held one skeleton each. They looked fragile and unreal, like items bought at Ye Old Bone Shoppe as part of a display. The last skeleton was dressed in dark pants and a brown sweater. A thick, dried out leather belt festooned with pockets was rolled up in a corner. Toward the back of the skull were two small holes. The skull made an echoing, hollow, thunk, as Priscilla dropped it into the coffin and whispered, “Guess who?”

  “Charles Watson,” I said.

  Priscilla nodded. “Besides Frank, Watson, and Rundle, the rest of them were women. Seven people Harry, those reptiles killed seven people.”

  “Come on, let’s get some air and think about this.” I wanted us out of this crypt, to go somewhere where we could breath. We hurried through the ancient room, stirring up clouds of that gray dust that hung in the chilled air like mist. Again I snapped my mask and caused an explosion of powder in front of my face. Priscilla pulled her mask aside, hacked up and spit out large gobs of phlegm and mucus. She put her mask back on and rapped her flashlight against it. Then, with her coughing and hacking frequently, we trudged through the dirt and cobwebs into the room under the trap door, stood near the stairs and took off our masks,

  In the beam of my light Priscilla’s dirty face glowed with excitement. I looked at her, took a deep breath and said, “Okay, we did it. We pulled it off, but for what? Our options seem fairly narrow. One: we could go to the police and tell them our tale and probably talk ourselves into major trouble. Two: we gather up Frank and tell Eva a story, collect the reward, and everyone keeps quiet. We’d have to leave Watson here, I wouldn’t want to chance Helen talking. Three: we leave and drop it. My choice would be op
tion two.”

  Priscilla coughed several times, hacked up mucus and spit. “Well,” she said in a wheezing voice. “I agree about the cops, they’re definitely out, they might find out about Dorthea, the money, and all that. Besides who needs them?” She stepped closer and peered up at me. “Two? Maybe. I know Eva would go for it if we didn’t tell her all we knew. If she knew about Mystery Man Timothy she’d want his balls bronzed and sitting on her mantle. Three? Maybe, it’d be easiest of all. No fuss, no muss, but no five K either”.

  I stood and waited for Priscilla to say what I knew she was going to say.

  “But whoever he is, I’d kinda like Timothy’s stones too. I know we don’t have any proof, just that he drove T. William down to his final home, but I don’t think he’s just an innocent friend. There are seven skeletons down here, all murdered. Those creeps killed people for jewelry and gold coins and didn’t seem to think a whole hell of a lot about it, and if this Timothy is family enough to drive T. Willy to a funny farm, he’s also part of the game.”

  I let it all sift through my mind, weighting pros and cons, trying to intuit the right thing to do. After a time I laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “No. We collect Frank, we leave. We feed Eva and Ona a severely abridged version of what we’ve been doing, collect our rightful due, and that’s it. That’s all.”

  She stared up at me. Her eyes flat, expressionless. Finally she sighed and said, “All right, Old Man, this was your party, and it has been a hell of a ride. Thank you.”

  I pulled my light away from her face. “Thank you. We’ll breath in a bit more good air, then go back and collect your grandfather’s bones and get the hell out of here.”

  She gave a quick, thin smile and said, “Sounds like a plan. I’ve always wanted to collect my rightful due. Honestly, the way you talk. And we’ll let Frank spend the night on the boat if that’s kosher with you. We still have to bake a story to feed Eva and Ona.”

  “Of course, I … ”

  Noise. We raised our heads and stared up at the opening above us. Cold silence, then, barely audible, I heard the soft grinding of footsteps. Dirt fell like a gentle rain between us. Priscilla dug her hand in my arm and pulled. With her light bobbing about like a doomed rabbit, we hurried out of the room, through the tunnel, and back into the ice house proper. She closed the door and in a harsh whisper said, “Hold this door shut and do not, let whoever the hell’s out there get through.”

  I pressed against the door with everything I had. Fear plucked at my brain like a hungry rat and a flickering image of my shattered body crammed in the coffin with Frank Jankey’s bones burned in my consciousness, because I had no doubts, Timothy was coming to kill us.

  Her light bouncing everywhere, Priscilla scurried back carrying two boards. She kneeled down and jammed one board into the small space between the bottom of the door and the floor. Then she did the same with the other board, stood, and kicked each board several times, jamming them tight under the door. She moved close, touched my cheek and whispered, “Well Harry, Elvis is in the building.”

  “Priscilla, if it’s Timothy he’s coming to kill us.”

  “If? Hello! Who the hell else would it be? But kill us? The bastard’s gonna have to work at it. Now listen, we don’t have much time. The first thing is, turn off your flashlight. The second thing is, we put our masks back on, the fucking dust is as thick as water.”

  With trembling fingers I slipped the mask over my head and adjusted it. Despite the cold, I was sweating like I’d just finished three sets on the machines. The salty drops stung my eyes and I was panting like a frightened puppy.

  Life or death and I couldn’t concentrate.

  Priscilla pulled me away from the door and we waited. The black air settled on me like a wet shroud. I tried to clear my mind and come up with some sort of plan, but nothing materialized. My mind, such as it was, was preoccupied with free floating panic.

  Suddenly, a beam of diffused light shot through the small opening in the middle of the door. A moment later it disappeared. Muffled sounds cut the silence as someone tried to open the door. More silence. Then a grunt and a loud thump as that someone slammed against it.

  Another long silence, then, “All right people, unblock the door and I’ll come in and we’ll talk.”

  We knew that voice. Priscilla gripped my shoulder and moved us closer to the wall. Then she hit the door twice with her flashlight and said, “Tell me, asshole, you gonna kill us with the same gun you killed Frank with?”

  “Well well, so you did find T. William’s special place. That, people, is a shame, a damn shame, for now you’re definitely going to have to die.”

  I felt Priscilla move slightly. “Tell me, asshole, why did you kill Frank? And Watson, why kill Watson?”

  “You and your friend should have left well enough alone, Short Round, but I know about curiosity, it gets more things killed than cats.”

  With a harsh grunt, he slammed into the door again. Hissing like some primordial beast, cascades of dirt fell on us. We pressed against the wall and waited.

  “Just so you die knowing, Short Round, it was Dorthea that did Watson. Out of all the bodies in that room back there, your grandfather was the only one I did.”

  Another grunt as he slammed against the door.

  I flicked on my light and shined it at the floor. Through the dust I saw that the impacts had pushed Priscilla’s boards back an inch or so. Priscilla put her hand over my light. I turned it off and she said, “So why’d you kill Frank, Asshole? Why did you kill my grandfather?”

  Again a narrow beam of diffused light shot through the hole in the door and moved from left to right. The light went out, and another loud thud echoed through the dark as he slammed his body into the door. After a time he said, “Watson came to inquire about funeral services. I was upstairs having a beer when I heard a shot. I ran downstairs and there was he was, on the floor, twitching like he was having a fit. Dorthea put another one in his head and he shit himself and died. I asked her why the hell she did that and she looked at T. William and they both smiled and T. William said to roll him over and check his waist. I did. The man was carrying fifty-nine Canadian Maple Leafs. Fifty nine ounces of gold for Christ’s sake! The man was definitely stupid. They were worth just under a hundred thousand. I put a hell of a dent in my mortgage with my share, and Dorthea and T. William gave a few to Amos and spent the rest. Those two spent money like it was water.

  “That night we brought Watson down here and the next morning T. William and I were getting rid of his car. I was driving it along a logging road with T. William following in my truck. We were taking it to a place where no one will ever find the goddamn thing and Jankey saw us. He was running along the road and we passed him. Maybe he knew Watson’s car and maybe he didn’t, but he must have figured something wasn’t kosher because he turned around and ran away like a scalded dog.”

  He stopped talking. In the cold perfect silence I heard him suck in a deep breath, and an instant later he smashed into the door again. “Hey Timothy,” Priscilla yelled. “Ram the door with your goddamn head, you’ll do better.”

  The silence was long and dead. Finally… “How do you know my middle name, Short Round? Only Dorthea and T. William knew it. Damn, dear cousin Dorthea, I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  Ronald Anderson’s voice sounded puzzled, surprised. Then, with a pained grunt, he slammed into the door again. After a moment’s silence he spoke again. His voice was loud, clear, and enraged. “Your dear, departed Grandfather was running along the top of that hill. He never turned, never looked back. I stopped the cruiser, opened the door and nailed him in the back of the head with my nine millimeter, and left handed at that. After I dropped him at the funeral home I had Rundle fill out the report and sign it. He wasn’t all that happy about it but he owed me plenty. Still and all he was a lush and a risk, so one night I invited him over to Dorthea and T. William’s for a drink. After four or five brandies and Coke, he comes back from taking a piss
, sits down and Dorthea pops him with her twenty two. Couple of hours later, he’s down here, in the Special Place, right where you and that other bum are going to be very shortly.” And he slammed into the door again. This time something cracked.

  I felt Priscilla move. She edged to the door. Her voice was as cold as the fetid black air. “Here’s a Short Round fun fact for you, Anderson. Your dear cousin Dorthea died badly… while we watched.”

  The silence was pure, absolute, and long. Priscilla grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the door. Flashlights off, we inched along the wall, creeping through a malignant nightmare. I had my hand in the middle of her back, clutching her sweatshirt so hard my fingers were cramping. Anderson slammed into the door again. The sound of it breaking and hitting the wall echoed through the ice house like a muffled explosion.

  We stopped. My ears strained for the sound of footsteps. Why not make a break for the door, I thought. Freedom is only two stories up.

  Because he’s somewhere down here, close, and that would be that. What to do? I didn’t know. This was Priscilla’s game and she’s making the rules as we slithered along the wall.

  Concentrate.

  Priscilla is crazy, this won’t work. Anderson has a gun for God’s sake. I’m going to get shot again. And this time I’m going to die. What will it feel like?

  Concentrate.

  Priscilla was my only hope. My mouth felt like I’d been licking dirt off the floor. Will he jam us in the coffins? Of course he will. We’ll be additions to the Special Place, the last of the string. Perhaps Eva or Ona will put another ad in the paper. Perhaps in a decade or so another curious soul will crawl along these festering walls and find my bones.